Capital One

Some friendly coworkers to work with.

In 1.5 years of working there, less than 1% of my time was actually spent writing code (about 50 lines total).

As a senior developer, you're not valued for your software development knowledge. The model is to have interns and junior developers do all the coding, while senior developers are pushed into managerial and project babysitting roles. At least 4 hours of every day are spent in meetings, and another hour or so is spent preparing for those meetings.

There's so much bureaucracy and so much regulation, you spend an insane amount of time applying for access for every single thing you need to do, and then waiting for days and weeks to get it.

Also, you're forced to work with internal buggy tools that are always breaking, with a steep learning curve, as they're always changing. A lot of time is spent configuring those tools and debugging them, knowledge that will only serve you at Capital One and nowhere else.

And you spend a lot of time doing extracurricular activities. There's a lot of emphasis on "influence," which means giving talks and presentations to other teams and impressing them with vague buzzwords, organizing social events for interns, etc.

And even though the company claims they don't do stack ranking for evaluations (where by design, everyone's performance is curved, only a small percentage is allowed to be promoted, and a certain percentage has to be let go every year), it is definitely being done. And it creates a toxic environment where people backstab one another in reviews.

Capital One is trying to advertise itself as a "tech company" and not a bank. If that were true, there is no world where less than 1% of a software developer's time is actually spent writing code.